Puriton: How Does AdBlue End Up in a Diesel Tank, and How Do You Prevent It?
If AdBlue is already in your diesel tank, stop reading for a moment: leave the engine and the ignition off and phone 0333 366 0103. Around Puriton, finding it before the motor runs normally means a drain and a full flush where it stands. If you are reading before it has happened, the remainder of this page is about why it occurs and how to make sure it does not.
Two fillers, two tanks: AdBlue in a diesel car
Not one fluid but two: that's how plenty of modern diesels near Puriton and Knowle carry, with diesel for your engine. AdBlue goes to the exhaust, where it is sprayed into the gas to fresh it, and it lives in a tank of its own.
Each tank has its own filler. Under one flap, next to each other: that is the layout on a lot of vehicles. On others, AdBlue's filler sits beneath the bonnet or in your boot instead. At the pump, the diesel side gets filled constantly. The AdBlue side is topped up far less often, normally from a bottle, and usually by someone who has to stop and think where it goes. Mistakes happen in the gap between them.
How does AdBlue in the diesel tank happen around Puriton?
Three things tend to come together, and carelessness is rarely one of them.
To start with, the warning. Low AdBlue triggers a message from the vehicle, and letting it run dry means limp mode — so a hurried top-up, maybe before work off Middle Street, or at The Admirals Table on the way home that evening.
Then your car is unfamiliar. A hire car, a new car or a company car puts the fillers where your last one did not, and the hand reaches for the cap it would have used on the old one.
No part stops the tip after it has started, since a bottle with a spout goes into a diesel filler as readily as an AdBlue one. The bottle fits. Down End or the middle of Puriton: it takes the same few seconds in both.
Which filler is for AdBlue, and which for diesel?
Before you tip anything, whether on a drive in Pawlett or a forecourt around Puriton, check these. They take a couple of seconds.
- The cap. The AdBlue cap is regularly blue, or marked "AdBlue". The diesel cap normally is not. Read it rather than going by position.
- The size. On many vehicles the AdBlue filler neck is the smaller of the two.
- Look inside your fuel flap: many motors carry a label there showing which fuel goes where.
- The handbook shows where it is if your filler isn't next to the diesel cap: the boot, or under the bonnet.
- Collecting a hire or company car, say at the car park outside Bridgwater? Ask whoever drove it last before you set off, not once the light goes on.
Keeping AdBlue out of your diesel tank when you top up
The day the light comes on, wherever around Somerset, follow this routine.
- Pull in on level, engine off, with time to spare — not hurried on the side of Rye.
- Locate the AdBlue filler, read the cap, and speak the name "AdBlue" aloud while unscrewing it. It sounds silly. It works.
- If both sit under one flap, check your diesel cap is still closed before you lift the bottle — and leave it on.
- Finish when your tank fills or the bottle is empty; until then, tip slowly using the own spout.
- Close the cap and check a second time. Make sure your diesel cap was never opened. Only then start your car.
Stop there if you find, at step two or three, that you have already poured into your diesel side. Don't carry on to step five.
Puriton: already put AdBlue in your diesel tank?
Brief order, then. Top of it: the motor remains off. Leave the ignition off too, since on many diesels switching it on by itself runs the fuel pump. Filling up with diesel won't dilute it: rather than mixing, AdBlue sinks to the bottom of that tank, just where fuel is drawn from.
At a forecourt — BP, Shell or another — the attendants will normally help roll your car away, when you ask. Your own drive around Puriton is the place it stays.
Stop as soon as it is safe then switch off, if the motor has already run. Puriton lies under a mile from the M5; there, take the next junction. Roughly how far did it go? Crossing Puriton is less a job than a trip of under 15 miles to Wells, so say.
Puriton: what happens when we arrive
We come to the vehicle wherever it has stopped, whether that's outside Puriton Primary School, near St Michael and All Angels or on your own drive. Both the work and the quote depend on three answers — what fluid, what quantity, and if it has run — so our technicians ask. Nobody sets off until you've had our price by phone.
The system is then flushed thoroughly, after your tank is cleared. AdBlue crystallises and is corrosive to some of the metals in a fuel system, and so it does not wash out on its own — which is why the flush counts more with AdBlue than with petrol. After your filter has been cleaned — or renewed, where required — fresh diesel is added, and then the vehicle gets tested. Before leaving, our engineers start it and make sure that it is running smoothly.
If the engine has not run, most jobs take about half an hour once we're there, using pumps that are safe on a working forecourt and quiet enough to use outside a house after dark. You pay on the day, with nothing upfront, and get a VAT invoice and an engineer report for your insurer. While we travel, have a look at your policy; plenty include cover for misfuelling.
About Puriton
Puriton is a small village in Somerset, situated near the coast and close to the M5 motorway. Puriton has a population of around 1138 people and is characterized by semi-detached housing. Puriton is located near other small settlements such as Down End and Dunball, and is within commuting distance of the city of Wells. Puriton sits at a low elevation of 12 metres above sea level, in the gently sloping coastal lowlands of Somerset.
AdBlue drains around Puriton and across Somerset
Throughout TA postcodes, the vans that cover Puriton — a coastal village — work the surrounding places too, Walpole and Dunball included. Fastest of all: quote a TA7 8 postcode to the van.
No need to shift the car. The drain takes place on the spot, whether a driveway, a road near Somerset County Council-Highways Depot, or a lay-by towards Eleven Acre Covert. If you are near a boundary, or somewhere hard to describe like the back of Caput Montis, ring and ask rather than guessing.
In short, for Puriton motorists
Always, the cap; after that, the tip. Petrol in Diesel empties it where it stands, anywhere around Somerset, if AdBlue has gone in your diesel tank anyway — so leave the vehicle off and ring 0333 366 0103.